Search Shows

Chris Addison: The Ape That Got Lucky

Show type: Edinburgh Fringe 2002

Critically acclaimed la-de-da smartypants Chris Addison is back with his new show The Ape That Got Lucky. He's spent two years explaining away the foibles of the English nation to sell-out audiences around the world in the hit shows Cakes And Ale and Port Out, Starboard Home. This year the subject is Mankind itself.

Comedians

Reviews

Original Review:

Addison packs a hell of a lot into his show. A relentless stream of jokes, rants, throwaway asides and well-researched facts bombard the audience, with sentences and ideas bundling over themselves in a frenzied scramble to get from comedian to audience.

He may admit to looking like a weedy ponce, but Addison's performance packs more than enough punch - breezily launching into an effective array of characters from Neanderthal cavemen to the quintessentially tea-and-biscuits English chap to give extra power to the material.

Delivered like a science lecture on fast-forward, Addison crams several millennia of homo sapiens evolution into 60 minutes. It's a format that allows him to talk about a vast array of keen observations on almost any aspect of human behaviour, topped and tailed with a reference to our species' prehistoric past to give a strong narrative core.

There are some really lovely gags and ideas in here, and they are never milked dry. Well, perhaps his Daily Mail-hating rant is, but it is funny and shows that even polite liberal comedians can sometimes muster a fire-in-the-belly spirit.

Instead, the main risk is that of gags being lost under the torrent of top-rate material - a very nice position to be in. In fact, the delivery style also enables him too liberally drop in references understood by only a minority of the audience, letting several smaller laughs combine with each other like an elaborate chord.

Assured, confident and likeable, his stage manner only enhances the strong material, making for a rich feast of comedy. Definitely recommended viewing.

This web site uses cookies to improve your experience. If you continue we'll assume that you are happy to receive cookies from this website. To find out more please view our cookie guide.

We see you are using AdBlocker software. Chortle relies on advertisers to fund this website so it’s free for you, so we would ask that you disable it for this site. Our ads are non-intrusive and relevant. Help keep Chortle viable.